When it comes to the Republican tax bill, whatever you do, don't ask for details. "I’m not going to get into baselines," Speaker Paul Ryan told the AP Thursday, "simply because our tax writers are going to be putting the paper up pretty soon."
It's coming the week of September 25 supposedly, yet the guy in charge of writing it, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, told Huffington Post Wednesday that they were “still hammering out the details.”
Nonetheless, Ryan is fully confident it'll pass before the start of the New Year. "Our plan is to get this done by the end of the year—for law—so that we start 2018 with a new tax system," he said.
Ambitious! Of course let's remember, this is the guy who pushed for healthcare repeal as the GOP's opening legislative salvo. Yeah, AP reporters were a bit skeptical too.
AP: Do you realistically think this is going to be the kind of big tax reform package that you’ve been talking about for a while?
Ryan: Yes.
AP: Because when I talked to a lot of Republicans they think inevitably you end up with just a narrower tax cut.
Nope—Ryan's going big! He’s talking long-term tax reform—an overhaul, folks—not just short-term cuts.
And then there's the Rep. Devin Nunes spin, which is that Republicans know exactly what's going in the bill, they're just too scared to show their hand.
“We have a full bill. That’s not a problem,” senior Ways and Means member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Showing it is the challenge.”
Once Republicans release this document laying out the broad strokes of reform, lawmakers and interest groups will be able to attack from all sides. Conservatives may say the tax cuts aren’t ambitious enough. More moderate members ― somewhat ironically, by more traditional standards of fiscal restraint ― may have problems with how much the overhaul will increase the deficit. (Conservatives don’t seem to have a problem adding more money to the deficit, as long as it’s for tax cuts.) And individual loopholes, either the closing of them or their continued existence, will almost certainly draw opposition from even the most normally amenable lawmakers.
And these problems are even more stark in the Senate, where any three Republicans could derail the effort, assuming all Democrats vote against the overhaul.
So there you have it. Ryan is either sure they're passing a bill that they can't agree on or he's sure they're passing a bill they're too afraid to reveal because so many members will defect.
Good luck with that.